(upbeat music) - From NJ PBS Studios, this is NJ Spotlight News with Brianna Vannozzi.

- Hello and thanks for joining us on this Thursday.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

Tonight, a few stories we'll get into later in the broadcast.

It's day two of the federal government shutdown and it's already having an impact on health care here in New Jersey.

Then, the fate of one Jersey City hospital hangs in the balance.

We look at what's being done to save it.

And later, it may sound like a lost cause these days, civility in politics, but we'll tell you how bipartisan lawmakers are bringing this message to college campuses across the state.

But first, a few of today's top headlines.

A 17-year-old driver is facing murder charges in the hit-and-run deaths of two teenage girls who were riding their e-bikes home Monday night in their Cranford neighborhood.

The male teenager from Garwood hasn't been identified, but family and friends of the victims, Maria Niotis and Isabella Salas, both also 17, allege one of the girls had been stalked by the driver in the weeks leading up to her death, claiming the incident was no accident but a premeditated attack that had allegedly been plotted for months.

Neighbors reportedly said both local law enforcement and the school district had been notified about the stalking.

meanwhile the deadly incident comes on the heels of two other young e-bike riders who were killed in two separate crashes though authorities say no foul play was involved there.

a 13 year old was hit by a landscaping truck in Scotch Plains and a 22 year old was hit by a van in Orange when police say he crossed into opposing traffic.

Those incidents are adding to mounting pressure on local and state leaders to address what officials say is a dangerous and fast growing trend of traffic accidents involving e-bike riders.

Senate President Nick Scutari this week held a press conference in Scotch Plains where he renewed calls for lawmakers to support new e-bike safety regulations given the dramatic increase in their use.

Scutari says he's been working on legislation for years but it's hit opposition.

He wants to update licensing, classification and training requirements among other things.

We're in a new era of e-bike usage.

Their popularity is skyrocketing.

They're more affordable, they're faster, they're more powerful than we've ever seen before, and their risks have increased to those on the roadways and more particularly those that are using them.

And I think part of the legislation has to be a campaign to make sure that people understand that they're on the roadway and what is required of you when you're riding an e-bike versus a regular pedal bike.

And these injuries and fatalities in my estimation are going to continue to rise if we don't do anything about it.

Also tonight, Kean and New Jersey City Universities are one step closer to a historic merger in New Jersey's higher ed landscape.

Kean's board of trustees this week approved a definitive agreement just days after NJCU officials signed off on the deal.

If all goes through, it'll create one of the largest public university systems in the state.

The merger is slated to be complete by July 2026, moving faster than initially expected, and would see NJCU rebrand as Kean-Jersey City.

The students there would become part of Kean University with all of their academic credits and financial aid honored.

It's designed to help keep the nearly century-old NJCU remain open after grappling with economic problems for years.

The Murphy administration has committed $10 million to support the transition, and the merger even earned a credit boost from Moody's, which upgraded NJCU's financial outlook earlier this year.

Final approval is, though, still needed from the legislature, along with federal and state education agencies.

Coming up, how the federal government shutdown is limiting access to certain types of medical care in New Jersey.

We'll hear from patients and hospitals who say they're bearing the brunt.

That's next.

Funding for NJ Spotlight News provided by the members of the New Jersey Education Association.

Making public schools great for every child.

RWJBarnabas Health.

Let's be healthy together.

And Oriston, committed to delivering clean, reliable American-made energy.

- Well, we're only two days into the federal shutdown and already healthcare patients in New Jersey are feeling the effects.

Vital programs tied to pandemic era waivers have quietly ground to a halt.

Among them, a program called Hospital at Home that enables patients to recover safely in their own bed instead of one at a hospital.

With those waivers expired, some patients are being sent back to acute care while others are in limbo.

Our senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan is with me now to explain.

Bren, what's happening here?

Hey, Brianna.

So, the Senate is still scrambling to find a solution to this political showdown, but they're hung up on health care.

Democrats won't vote for a stopgap funding bill unless it maintains popular subsidies that make Obamacare insurance premiums more affordable.

Those are set to expire at the end of this year.

And Republicans won't budge, so shutdown.

The irony?

It's already messing with health care at 17 hospitals here in New Jersey.

Because buried in that budget document is a waiver.

It lets hospitals run a special program that releases some of their less critical patients to finish recovering at home.

Patients like Debbie Baina from Pittman.

She recently spent only one night at the virtual hospital system getting treated for pneumonia.

DEBBIE BAINA, Pittman Hospital Patient: If I had to spend five days in that hospital, it would have been torture.

So I cannot tell you enough how nice it was to come home and be in my own bed and be in my own house, especially when you're not feeling good.

You want to be home with your own pillow and your own blanket and, you know, your own, you know, daughter out there making tea for me.

I mean, until you've been in that, those shoes, you know, I've been a nurse for 32 years at the bedside.

And, you know, you can't sleep in those places.

Now, full disclosure, Baina is a nurse at Virtua.

That's how she knew about the program, called Hospital at Home.

Virtua cares for eight patients total at a time, treatment lasting about three days each at home.

That includes constant digital monitoring, two visit today from nurses, all medications and lab work.

But with a government shutdown looming, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, last week directed hundreds of hospitals across the U.S.

to suspend that program.

No waiver, no funding, so Virtua finished treating and discharged all of its hospital-at-home patients by September 29th, including those with private insurance.

But the program's medical director really hopes to restart it soon because it works.

Just the fact that you're able to be mobile more than you're able in the brick-and-mortar hospital allows to recover better and recover sooner.

So we've seen that patients treated in hospital at home are not going to, so acute rehab, for example, after an admission to our program, which means that they're recovering faster, they're recovering better, and it allows them to continue their life and continue their life at home.

All 17 acute care hospitals in New Jersey that have a hospital at home program followed those shutdown protocols, including five in the Hackensack Meridian Health Network, which noted "All patients in the program have been safely discharged and none needed to be transferred back to our hospitals.

Patients who need this level of care can and will continue to receive care in our acute hospitals.

Now, the shutdown has not stopped telehealth services, at least not yet.

You can still set up virtual appointments.

But telemedicine also needs a waiver first put in place during the pandemic.

That also expired Tuesday, without congressional action.

And, without it, providers can't get paid.

Telemedicine advocates say it raises a dollars-and-cents question.

Do we continue to offer telehealth services in hopes that we're going to get reimbursed here in the next few days when the shutdown is over, or do we just say, hey, we're done for now?

We want to play it safe, and we don't want to take on that financial burden.

Now, that's Alexis Apple with the American Telemedicine Association.

She says CMS suggested a temporary workaround, asking its medical contractors to provide services, but not to submit telehealth claims for payment for the next 10 days.

It's a bit like rolling dice, Apple says.

- Basically, they're hoping in the next 10 days that the shutdown will be over.

So, there's still some, you know, that still worries me because I don't know if it's going to be over in 10 days.

I could see this going on for a month or longer.

So I don't know at this point.

A lot of people use telemedicine and New Jersey law continues to require many other health insurance types, including Medicaid, to cover telehealth.

Hospitals we contacted said their providers will continue to offer that service.

One study by Brown University showed 4.5 million Medicare recipients in the U.S.

had at least one telehealth visit in the first six months of this year alone.

Speaking of Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, none of those payments is impacted by this shutdown, Brianna.

So, Brian, you listed there a number of things that are not affected, that are affected.

What else could we see happen here in New Jersey from the shutdown?

Several different programs.

The shutdown could impact other programs in Jersey that rely on federal money.

The SNAP food assistance program should be able to serve its more than 800,000 clients here through October.

On the national level, the WIC supplemental nutrition program for moms and children is stressed with a week's worth of funding left.

However, New Jersey's WIC program says it has enough money to last into November.

And I should add that the national flood insurance program is not going to be issuing or renewing any policies.

And we've got two months left to go in the Atlantic hurricane season, Brianna.

And I mean, we should note too, the last shutdown of this type lasted 35 days.

That was back in 2018.

It stretched into 2019.

As Alexis there indicated, she expects this could go on for a month or more.

That's right.

How much of a concern is that for some of these health care providers?

I think it's it's deeply concerning, particularly for the telemedicine side of it.

They really need this to work because there are so many patients who, for example, live in rural areas or who are homeless.

And it makes it very difficult for them to get a ride, to get to a place, to see a provider face to face.

This way they can set up an appointment virtually, you know, provide all of their their pulse, you know, talk to their doctor about what's bothering them, get a prescription renewed.

And this is a vital part of health care right now.

All right, Bren, thanks for shedding light on this.

Great reporting.

Thanks for coming in.

Thanks, Brie.

And, by the way, federal employees assigned to New Jersey who are furloughed during the shutdown can apply for unemployment benefits.

In our spotlight on business report tonight, the State Department of Labor says those benefits will be paid to eligible workers for the duration of the shutdown, regardless of when claims are filed.

Applicants will be required to show proof of wages through a pay stub or federal pay statement.

But the state notes essential workers, or those who are required to work without pay during the shutdown, are not eligible because of federal law.

That includes military workers and FDA food inspectors, along with TSA and airports and air traffic controllers.

They all stay on the job, but they don't get paychecks until the government reopens.

The U.S.

Transportation Department said this week more than 11,000 employees at the FAA or about a quarter of its staff would be furloughed.

So there is the possibility of slowdowns at the airport.

Support for the business report is provided by the Newark Alliance presents the 2025 Halsey fest featuring the vibrancy of Newark's Arts and Education District and Halsey Street Halsey a neighborhood built on hustle and heart.

The 2025 Halsey fest schedule is available at HalseyNWK.com.

Well a last minute lifeline could save a Jersey City hospital on the brink of shutting its doors.

A day after two state lawmakers announced a plan to push for up to 25 million in emergency funding, the operator of Heights University Hospital says he'd welcome the help, which would be tied to state monitoring and could be clawed back if the hospital doesn't meet certain conditions.

Heights, which by the way was formerly known as Christ Hospital, is facing a roughly 60 million dollar shortfall for this year alone and its operator said last week it can't survive without immediate help from the state.

That was an announcement that stunned the community since it came on the heels of a recent takeover.

John Hyness is an investigative reporter who owns and operates the Hudson County View.

He's been covering this story and he joins me now for the latest.

John, hey, it's good to see you.

Great reporting on this.

I want to ask first how the hospital got here to this financial breaking point so quickly after a takeover by Hudson Regional Health.

Hey Brianna.

Yes thank you.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

A pleasure to speak about it.

So basically as everybody knows or at least a lot of people know a care point health of these three hospitals.

They were formerly the Bayer Medical Center, Christ Hospital in Jersey City, Hoboken University Medical Center.

And then around April last year, they entered this, there's a bankruptcy proceeding ended and Hudson Regional at the time hospital took over.

And so now they have four hospitals, which was HRH and the three that I just named.

And obviously you don't go into bankruptcy if you're doing well financially.

So the hospitals had a lot of trouble.

And we remember a few years back that there was that scathing report from the state that talked about basically a shell operation going around between the operators.

And they said there was one hundred fifty million dollars that was kind of just getting passed back and forth between the three owners.

So with all that said, how do we end up here again?

I mean, it remains unclear.

I mean, when you mentioned the CEO, Dr.

Dizer-Kafaya, he put out that statement on Friday and he said that basically this is a dire situation and, you know, we need help from the state.

He didn't really elaborate on what was going on, but he said basically that they're going to need a lot of help to stay in operation.

And that led to a lot of public officials, elected officials coming out, asking for the state to jump in on this.

And it hasn't happened yet.

But as you alluded to, two state senators have a plan.

And whether or not it gets the votes remains to be seen.

But I'm told that even if it gets the full $25 million into the hospital system, that's not going to be enough to keep it open long-term.

So, there's a lot of moving parts here.

- Yeah, that's Raj Mukerji and Brian Stack, who are putting that proposal forward.

What's the latest on that emergency aid?

And as you said, it seems like a lot more would be needed.

And the CEO alluded to it being sort of part of maybe a larger package to keep the place afloat.

- Yeah, so as far as an update on the bill, I mean, that was just Tuesday, I believe.

So, nothing really has changed since then as far as the legislation, as far as I'm aware of.

But, you know, I have spoken to State Senator McCurdy, who was the lead sponsor, and of course, a lot of co-sponsor, and Brian Stack, as you said.

But, you know, there's going to need to be the monitor, as you mentioned.

And, of course, they want to have some safeguards, because CarePoint -- when CarePoint was part of this, they had a lot of blank checks.

And, obviously, that didn't seem to do a lot of good in the long term.

So, they're trying to make sure that we're not repeating past mistakes, or at least that's what it sounded like based on that Instagram reel where we detailed all of this, which is where we first heard about it.

Now, how much do I think it's going to take?

Hard to say definitively, but if you look at what Kefaya said on Friday, he said that they're getting about $60 million in losses a month, just on Christ alone.

So, that's pretty big, obviously.

Or, sorry, that was probably $60 million to date, since they took over, but that's still a lot.

And, you know, obviously, they're probably going to need, I don't want to put a number on it, but it's going to be a lot more than $25 million to stay open for the long term.

And, you know, you've seen, for example, Hudson County Commissioner Bill O'Day say that if this is redeveloped, the hospital needs to stay open.

And McCurdy echoed that sentiment as well.

So there is some concern in the community.

I've heard from residents that are like, hey, is the hospital going to close?

Are they just going to turn it into a high-rise?

And there was a redevelopment plan that was considered into Hoboken.

It didn't end up making an agenda, ultimately.

But so redevelopment for these hospitals has been one proposal to try to get this -- to inject a little cash into this system.

But they haven't found a way where they can have a palatable situation for everybody involved.

Yeah because as you mentioned it's not the first time they've been in financial crisis when under the ownership of CarePoint.

That was the issue there.

But there was it was determined anyway right that there was a real need for this that it was a safety net hospital.

What do we know about the immediate impacts it would have on the community and the people who rely on the services if they were to suspend?

So if they do suspend non-essential services, I mean, you know, McCurdy and all the other electeds that we've talked about today have already said, I mean, it would just be catastrophic.

And the reason being is it's not just people that live in the Jersey City Heights where I happen to live that go to this hospital.

I mean, you also have people from Journal Square, from Union City, from, you know, a lot of areas in the surrounding community.

Some people from Hoboken, too, even though they have their own hospitals.

So, and, you know, to put all that, all those patients and all of those services on the back of the Jersey City Medical Center, I mean, certainly they couldn't accommodate that overnight or even over the span of a few months if I was going to take a stab at it.

So, and we also heard from a McCurgey at Vipka Faya.

They noted that this is a hospital where a lot of patients use Medicare, a lot of patients don't have insurance, so they're basically treated for free, which is part of the reason why we're in the--they're in the dire straits here.

But the problem for them is there's not, obviously, just a hospital out every quarter where they could get free treatment or Medicaid-accepted care.

So, obviously, there's a big concern here for the underprivileged communities in the Jersey City community and beyond.

Yeah, not to mention, which we didn't even talk about, but federal funding is obviously on shaky ground.

We have to leave it there.

John Heinis, thanks so much for sharing your reporting with us.

Appreciate it, as always.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

Really appreciate it.

Finally, tonight, in a time when political debates often turn toxic, two longtime state lawmakers, one Republican, one Democrat, are hitting the road with a different message, one touting civility.

Senators John Bramnick and Joe Kryan have launched what they're calling the "College Civility Tour."

It's a series of live campus debates aimed at showing political opponents can agree without being disagreeable, an idea that was formed in the wake of political activist Charlie Kirk's assassination.

Raven Santana reports.

I am sad about what I see.

Just listen a little more.

Listen to the end of the thought.

Nearly 100 students got a lesson in civility from an unlikely duo, Republican Senator John Bramnick and Democratic Senator Joe Kryan.

It's all part of their New Jersey College Campus Civility Tour, now in its second stop at Union County College.

The idea?

To show college students that politics doesn't have to be toxic and that people on opposite sides of the aisle can debate issues without the shouting match.

We really need to make more of an effort on college campuses and honestly beyond college campuses to engage in dialogue in respectful ways.

And respectful doesn't necessarily mean that we need to toe the line about what we believe in.

The tour is being billed as a series of public debates sparked they say by growing concerns about political violence including the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk earlier this year.

The murder of Charlie Kirk is horrific.

Just a few months ago months before that we had attacks on state legislators in Minnesota.

And if you look back at history political violence assassination attempts are not new.

I believe that by understanding the government, by understanding how to communicate effectively between one another, we can avoid these sort of rabbit holes that radicalize people and cause them to commit such horrible political violence.

Students at Rutgers, the tour's first stop, told me that the message couldn't come at a better time.

And here at Union County College, the president says she hopes the event is a model for how we can move forward.

We're having a Republican and a Democrat.

We see so much division in our nation.

The reds on one side, the blues on the other.

We're putting them both on the stage here at UCNJ to prove, to demonstrate, and also, yes, to role model that we can disagree, but we can still get along and live peacefully together.

Easier said than done, some students I spoke with admitted.

I've only really met a certain number of people in certain groups, but I haven't seen them together to see how they debate.

Like everybody's always going to be aggressive when it comes to politics, and that's why I just choose to stay out of it for the most part.

On stage, the senators didn't shy away from hot-button topics from gun laws to hate speech to the role of social media and cable TV in fueling division.

People today only listen to their cable channel or their app.

They have become isolated.

And when they get together, people on other sides of the aisle, it becomes instant conflict.

When the leader of the free world and the leader of the United States of America says, "I hate my opponents," and literally falls in partisan terms with the vehement and the emotion, I think that's a scary time for all.

That call for civility comes as New Jersey's governor's race turns increasingly bitter, with Mikey Sherrill and Jack Ciarrelli's attacks on each other getting more heated, especially following the controversy over the release of Congresswoman Sherrill's military records.

In the governor's race, certainly in the last week, with the, I think by their own account, the archives' illegal release of things has certainly put the race into a different stratosphere in terms of level of discussion and level of where it is.

I think it's a very close race as long as they stick to the issues.

I'm not too big on personal attacks.

Both senators reminded students why they're on this tour to show that politics works best when it's focused on issues, not insults, and to encourage having the courage to listen even when you disagree.

For NJ Spotlight News, I'm Raven Santana.

That's going to do it for us tonight.

But a reminder, you can download our podcast wherever you listen and watch us anytime by subscribing to the NJ Spotlight News YouTube channel.

Plus, you can always follow us on Instagram and Blue Sky to stay up to date on all the state's big headlines.

And with Election Day just around the corner, check out our voter guide to get up to speed on the candidates and races on the ballot this year.

And head to the NJ Decides 2025 tab on our homepage.

I'm Brianna Vannozzi.

For the entire team at NJ Spotlight News, thanks for being with us.

We'll see you right back here tomorrow.

NJM Insurance Group, serving the insurance needs of residents and businesses for more than 100 years.

Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, an independent licensee of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association.

and by the PSCG Foundation.

- Orsted believes that clean energy is more than just a power source.

It's an opportunity to create stronger economies and communities.

Together, the South Fork Wind and Sunrise Wind projects from Orsted will provide American wind-powered energy for New Yorkers and support jobs, education, and the local supply chain.

Orsted.

Committed to a clean energy future for New York.

Whatever your cancer journey, there's one place in New Jersey where our discoveries become your care.

You'll have access to advanced treatments, including clinical trials, thanks to our renowned scientists and multidisciplinary teams at New Jersey's only NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center.

The one world-class cancer program that's close to home.

RWJBarnabas Health and Rutgers Cancer Institute.

Let's beat cancer together.

[MUSIC PLAYING]